ABN Amro Managers Give Up Pay Increases After I.P.O. Delay

LONDON — A group of ABN Amro’s top managers has said that it would give up a pay increase after the Dutch government delayed a decision last week on an initial public offering of the state-owned lender and after an uproar by lawmakers over the executive salary increases.

This month, the Dutch lender’s supervisory board approved a “temporary fixed allowance” of 100,000 euros, or about $109,000, for six eligible members of its managing board, raising their base salaries to €707,500 in 2014. Gerrit Zalm, the chairman of the managing board, a post that is the equivalent of chief executive, was not eligible for the allowance.

The pay increase was widely criticized by Dutch lawmakers, who have taken a much tougher stance on compensation for members of the finance industry, enacting stricter bonus caps this year than those put in place by their European peers.

“We understand and regret the turbulence that has arisen,” the bank’s managing board said in a news release on Sunday.

“Now that our remuneration is the subject of discussion and threatens to affect the future of ABN Amro, we are putting the interests of the bank and the public first — as we always do — and have decided to renounce the allowance,” it said. “We hope this will bring the bank in calmer waters.”

In a letter to Parliament on Friday, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch finance minister, said he would delay a decision on when to proceed with the offering after Parliament’s finance committee said it was seeking information about the salary increases.

The Dutch government had hoped to make a decision on the offering in the first quarter and proceed with an I.P.O. in the second half of this year.

On Sunday, Mr. Dijsselbloem said he welcomed the move by the lender’s management. “After completion of the consultation with the Parliament, the cabinet will reconsider the start of the planned I.P.O.,” he said.

The bank traces its roots to ABN Amro Holding, which was broken up in 2007 after a €71 billion deal in which the Royal Bank of Scotland, Banco Santander of Spain and the Belgian bank Fortis acquired pieces of the former company.

The Dutch assets of Fortis and the Belgian lender’s share of ABN Amro were nationalized during the 2008 financial crisis, costing the Dutch government more than €20 billion. It also led to the loss of thousands of jobs at the bank.

The pay controversy comes as Dutch lawmakers enacted a cap on bonuses this year for employees in the banking, insurance and other finance sectors that limits so-called variable pay to 20 percent of their fixed salary.

The managing board members of ABN Amro, who include its chief financial officer and its chief operating officer, are not eligible to receive variable allowances, essentially annual bonuses, while the lender is receiving government support.

Instead, the managing board members were previously eligible for the €100,000 allowance in 2012 and in 2013, but previously waived it, ABN Amro said in its annual report this month.

ABN Amro’s prospects have improved in recent years as it has shed operations and reduced its provisions for bad loans.

The bank’s underlying profit, which excludes certain special items, more than doubled in 2014, to €1.55 billion from €752 million in 2013.